


Language or the Kiss

by NyxEtoile



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Joanlock - Freeform, POV Female Character, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyxEtoile/pseuds/NyxEtoile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not part of my Complicated series. </p>
<p>Joan contemplates the language of Sherlock</p>
            </blockquote>





	Language or the Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure where this came from. Watching a lot of Season 1 shows and getting into their heads. Title comes from an Indigo Girls song, though this doesn't have much to do with the song itself.
> 
> General spoilers for S1 and S2.
> 
> Enjoy!

The first time he complimented her (sort of) was a warm fall morning in upstate New York. She’d just saved his life. Taken a leap of faith, trusted her gut and convinced a New York City police captain that she was more confident then she felt. And when she’d finally see him alive, breathing and sitting on a gurney, she’d been an odd combination of relieved and proud. And then he’d given her a compliment (couched in a double negative).

That was the first lesson in the language of Sherlock Holmes.

He didn’t talk like a normal person. There were the little nonsense noises at the end of sentences, making them questions when they didn’t really have to be. She learned to interpret the “hmms” and the “shall wes” and the “yeses.” They were signs of agitation, or getting far too wound up in himself. She learned to answer then with a look. Rolled eyes or a crooked brow. Just a little unimpressed reality to get him back to earth. 

It was hard, when he was mad at her. After Alistair and the visit to Hemdale and the breach of trust. She’d been a bit afraid he’d never speak to her again. He talked to her, of course. About cases and the current level of the milk and the weather and the bees. But that was just talk. He wasn’t speaking his language anymore.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later she started hearing it again. Hearing and seeing it, really, because half of his language was non-verbal. (Haptic, he would call it, but she hadn’t learned that from him yet.) It had been while he was sick, trying to solve the shooting death of a professor while she tried to reconcile her feelings for Liam. He’d mocked her tea but when he was desperate and lost and maybe a little sad about what he’d inadvertently done to a woman and her daughter he’d asked her for more. And in the simple request she’d heard so much more. Forgiveness for her poking in his past. An invitation to his world of deduction (yes it had started that early, looking back. She suspected that as angry as he’d been about the Irene stuff he’d also been kind of impressed she’d figured it out). 

They’d solved both their cases that week and found a new understanding between them.

It was her hesitant understanding of his language that had clued her in on how very, very bad the M incident could have been.

It was her desire to learn more that made her lie.

She’d discovered new tenses and vocabulary when he’d asked her to stay. She’d learned that the word partner could be sweeter then a lover’s endearment.

He’d tried to compliment her autopsy skills but a disgraced former surgeon had limits. (She did make a graceful Y incision, though. All her instructors had said so.) It was the thought that counted, she reminded herself. And in Sherlock’s world you could absolutely have “a moment” over a corpse in the middle of the night in a funeral home you’d broken into.

There had been dozens of compliments since the first one, some verbal some haptic. She ferreted them out, big and small, and put them in a small box in the corner of her heart for safekeeping. (Because a compliment for Sherlock Holmes was rarer them pearls, though she seemed to rack them up with increasing frequency.)

She was his empirical difference. That warmed her to her toes and barely fit in her heart-box.

She hated herself for disliking Irene. She was damaged. She’d been abused. But Joan couldn’t reconcile the blonde invalid with the woman who must have captivated Sherlock so. She told herself it was worry not jealousy. But he stopped speaking to her again and she felt adrift. Because he had Irene back but Joan had lost Sherlock.  
 It was almost a relief when the woman turned out to be evil. A safe place for Joan’s anger. But Sherlock was reeling and had forgotten his own language. It was Joan’s place to remind him. To reteach him how to be him, the way he had tried with Irene.  
 In return he gave her bees.

In the coming months he taught and she learned. Self defense, handwriting analysis, lock picking, ash identification, accents, ballistics comparison, blood splatter and on and on.

Most importantly, she learned exactly what the word “partner” meant to Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t just about their work, though it started that way. He never treated her as an assistant or apprentice, though he had every right to. She was learning. Some things came to her quicker then others (she prided herself on her blood spatter skills). He could have treated her as subordinate but he never did. They were partners and he wanted her to thrive.

She delighted in surprising him. When she stole a watch off a killer’s arm she’d seen him fight with himself on how to praise her. She could have told him not to bother, she knew how to listen to what he couldn’t say.

He was terrible at giving presents. Christmas had been a disaster best not spoken of. And while she had no doubt he knew her birthday (probably down to the time of day and likely her birth weight and length as well) he hadn’t given her so much as a card. It had upset her at first. She was a woman who enjoyed gift giving and receiving. She could spend hours hunting for just the right thing for her mother or Em or one of Hope’s kids. He was more of a challenge, but she thrived on challenge. But there were a lot of things about Sherlock that you just had to accept. Definitions you had to revise.

The box of cold cases had been the best present she’d ever received. There weren’t words to describe how much it meant to her. Not in any language, even his. She spent all night going through them, totally lost in the files. Warm cups of tea appeared at her elbow, along with half a sandwich and cookies. 

He wasn’t a nice man. She knew that from day one. She’d dated nice men. Gone to school with them, worked with them. She knew nice and Sherlock wasn’t nice. It had baffled her why, then, he was nice to her. What had earned her a spot in his very small circle of kindness. When he told her she was exceptional and thus deserved exceptional effort she’d felt warmed. Even as they toed the line at what an end to them might look like she was warmed. 

Exceptional was almost as complicated as partner. It went in her heart box, the one she didn’t look in as much because the compliments and kind moments came more frequently now. She was fluent in Sherlock now (more that she was in Mandarin, if she was being honest). She knew there had been a shift in him with regards to her. That he only spoke of the end because he feared it so. She, for her part, saw no end to this. He surprised her and challenged her and strove to do the same with him. They might bicker and redraw the lines of this remarkable (exceptional) thing they’d made but that didn’t mean it was fragile. No, their partnership was strong, ugly and cobbled together from two broken pasts but it had a future.

There would always be more to learn.


End file.
